Anaïs Duplan is among many other established and up-and-coming writers that have been honored with the prestigious award.
A former New School professor and celebrated poet was one of 10 emerging writers to win a $50,000 Whiting Award this year.
Anaïs Duplan, who taught at The New School in 2021, was honored as a 2022 recipient of the award this month for his nonfiction book “Blackspace: On the Poetics of an Afrofuture.”
“‘Blackspace,’ which is a book that I published in 2020, is about looking at ways that
Black artists and musicians have thought about liberation through history,” Duplan said in an interview with The New School Free Press. “That was my first time publishing a book of essays, not poems.”
Duplan, a trans* poet, curator and artist, conducted six years of multidisciplinary research to inform “Blackspace.” The book, which is the fourth Duplan has written, includes lyric essays, interviews with contemporary artists and writers of color and ekphrastic poetry.
Duplan has an extensive portfolio and resume at just 29 years old. He has taught at The New School, Bennington College, Columbia University and Sarah Lawrence College. He also has a history of facilitating curatorial projects around the world, is a recipient of multiple fellowships and is the founder of an artist residency program for artists of color in Iowa City.
The author, who previously taught Writing the Essay III at Eugene Lang College of Liberal Arts, was given the award at a public ceremony in Manhattan on April 6. The ceremony was led by keynote speaker and poet, Maggie Nelson.
The Whiting Awards, which was launched 37 years ago, are given to emerging writers. Many previous winners of the award have gone on to become well-known authors including Colson Whitehead, Mary Karr, Tracy K. Smith and Alex Chee.
According to Duplan, the process for being nominated and winning the award is very secretive. It starts with 100 writers being nominated by people all over the country who are privately reached out to by the foundation. Then, a panel of six anonymous judges narrows down the list to 10 winners over the course of nine months.
“The whole time you don’t know that you’re being considered for the Whiting… unless you win,” Duplan said.
The celebration took place over the course of three days with a cocktail hour before the ceremony, breakfast with publishers and agents and a money workshop to advise the winners how to use their $50,000 prizes.
The actual ceremony took place in-person for the first time in two years at the New York Historical Society.
Duplan has already published his fifth book following “Blackspace,” titled “I NEED MUSIC,” and is currently working on a sixth book that he expects to finish by the end of 2023.
The upcoming book borrows similar ideas from “Blackspace” and makes them more academic, he said.
“It’s supposed to be useful as a textbook, a little bit more dry and straightforward,” the author said.
Despite his experience as a professor, Duplan’s best advice for young artists is to keep an open mind about who they are receiving mentorship from as he believes there are more people in the world to learn from than just professors.
“Think creatively about who could be a mentor figure for you,” Duplan said.